Our Shared Canvas
by HecateA
Summary: Until it broke his heart, Seamus was always thankful for the direct line he had to his soulmate. Oneshot. Written for Romance Awareness Day 23: Whatever you write/draw on your skin will appear on your soulmate's skin.


**Author's Note: **Enjoy! Written for 31 Days of Soulmate AUs Day 23: Whatever you write/draw on your skin will appear on your soulmate's skin.

**Disclaimer: **The following characters belong to J.K. Rowling, and this story derives from her original works, storylines, and world. Please do not sue me, I can barely pay tuition.

**Warnings: **Canon-compliant Deathly Hallows prejudice/violence/capture

* * *

**Stacked with: **MC4A; Shipping Wars; Hogwarts; Rays of Blades; Not Commonwealth; Harmony of Souls Eternal

**Individual Challenge(s): **Cuppa; More Than England; Gryffindor MX (x3); Brush; Fall Leaves; Seeds; Tissue Warning; Golden Times; Old Shoes; Themes & Things A (Love); Themes & Things B (Prejudice); Ethnic & Present; Rian-Russo Inversion (Y); In a Flash; Yellow Ribbon; Yellow Ribbon Redux

**Representation(s): **Muggleborn Dean Thomas; Wizarding War

**Bonus challenge(s): **In the Trench; Second Verse (Brooms Only); Chorus (A Long Dog)

**Tertiary bonus challenge: **Obscure

**Word Count: **1770

* * *

_**Shipping Wars**_

**Ship (Team): **Dean Thomas/Seamus Finnegan (Boom Boys)

**List (Prompt): **Spring Big List (Getting Together)

* * *

_**Hogwarts Submitting Info**_

**House: **Ravenclaw

**Assignment: **Assignment #1, Wandlore Task #3 Write about a strong bond between two people.

* * *

**Our Shared Canvas **

At first, it had been funny. Mum had laughed as they'd sat in bed when he was little, sometimes opting to look at the patterns and shapes that appeared on his palms instead of reading bedtime stories.

"It looks like you've got yourself an artist," Mum had chuckled as the planets, animals, flowers, trees, fruits, aliens, sea creatures, dragons, and objects appeared on Seamus' arms and hands and legs and feet.

They never stayed long; they appeared and faded to make room for more, as if his skin was a reusable canvas. When he really liked one of the drawings, Seamus begged Mum to take a picture. Sometimes he tried recreating his soulmate's creations himself—Dad bought him a big box of Muggle markers to do it. There was a cartoon octopus that always said jokes in big round speech bubbles that Seamus liked a lot, and a dragon that got better and better looking as they got older. But Seamus was really, _really _bad at drawing. So eventually he decided to sit back and just watch the imagery appearing on his skin instead.

* * *

Then it had been scary. Once he met the artist, that was. And Seamus knew with absolute certitude that it was Dean Thomas, because there was no way that anybody else in this world drew a dragon like Dean did. Not with the same number of claws, with the shape of the eye just so, with the wings arching out like that, the tail spiked like a harpoon…

Luckily for him, Dean was pretty shy and a Muggleborn student too—so they were both okay with quiet companionship as they got settled into the castle. It gave Seamus time to get to know him without panicking about what it all meant.

Dean always drew in his bed, with the curtains of his poster bed let down. Seamus could tell, of course. But one day he asked Dean about his sketchbook and soon Seamus became the first person Dean would draw in front of. They stayed in the Great Hall for hours after dinner, and Seamus would pretend to read or do homework and just watch Dean go at it.

"How do you come up with this stuff?" Seamus asked Dean, when he'd just finished a drawing of his dragon curled up on a huge pile of coins and rubies. He'd been working on it for days and it looked absolutely fierce.

"It just comes to me," Dean said. "You know how ideas just pop into your head sometimes and you feel like you _have _to put them down somewhere, to make them alive and show the world that they are?"

"I'm not a good artist," Seamus said sadly.

"Everyone's a good artist," Dean said. "It just takes practise."

"Trust me," Seamus said. He swallowed. "I've tried."

* * *

Next, it was a relief. It made everything feel right, when Dean caught Seamus writing just as the short stories about the dragon with the ruby hoard appear up and down his own collarbone.

Seamus couldn't draw but he could write, and now Dean knew what it was that he wrote about. He'd crawled out of his bed one night and come over to pull back the curtains of Seamus' bed—they had the dormitory to themselves, Merlin knew where Harry and Ron and Neville were. He was just wearing his flannel pajama pants, the gold chain his parents had gifted him for his fifteenth birthday resting on his chest. Seamus saw his words just underneath it, like the lines in a notebook.

"How long have you known?" Dean has asked him hoarsely, brown eyes loaded with questions and thoughts. The truth caught in Seamus' throat.

"A really long time," Seamus said.

"You could have said something," Dean said. "We tell each other _everything _else."

"I didn't want you to be mad," Seamus said, putting down his notebook and swinging his legs out of bed so that he too was standing before Dean in his sleeping clothes.

"Mad?" Dean asked. "Why would I be mad when it gives me license to do this…"

He pulled Seamus to him by the waist and kissed him square on the lips.

* * *

Eventually, it was about survival.

Neville came to find Seamus in the Hogwarts Express as they rode into their dismal seventh year and sat with him, which was decent of him.

"Can I join you?" Neville asked.

"Of course," Seamus said. Neville came in and shut the compartment door behind him. He squashed down in his seat with a heaviness that resonated with Seamus.

"They're not in the train either, I suppose," Seamus said.

"Of course not," Neville said. "Harry's not stupid enough to think that school would change anything—no matter what all those Death Eaters back on the platform were hoping for. Ron will be wherever he is, nevermind the spattergroit story, and even if Hermione wasn't with them which she obviously would be if they wanted to get anything done… well, she's got the same reasons as Dean not to be around."

Seamus swallowed and rested his forehead against the glass of the compartment's window, washing the lush greenery pass by in a flash. One year, Dean had drawn trees the whole ride to the castle, his head on Seamus' lap and his legs propped up on the seats to angle his sketchbook just right. They'd barely said a word the whole time. Seamus would kill to be able to reach down and brush his fingers along Dean's jaw with that kind of ease, that kind of freedom…

"Do you have any idea where he is?" Neville asked quietly.

Seamus shook his head. "I told him not to tell me. So that they couldn't get it out of me."

"Smart," Neville said, leaning back in his seat, satisfied. "I'm sorry."

He took a deep breath and rolled up the sleeve of his blue jumper. Along his wrist, dead dandelions were sprouting in plain black ink—tufts appearing soon after to adorn the stems and flutter away. That morning, a tiny train had appeared stretching down his right forearm, as if it was about to shoot up Seamus' arm and crash into his chest.

At least he knew that wherever Dean was, he was still drawing. He was still Dean. They might make it out of this okay as long as that was true.

Seamus thought that every night when he sat in bed, shirt off and pajama pants rolled up as high as he could, watching the shapes and landscapes and characters and creatures and portraits appear on his skin.

* * *

It nearly drove Seamus mad, in the end.

"You have to eat," Neville whispered to him. "Seamus, it doesn't have to be much—at least take some toast…"

"I can't," Seamus said. "I'm going to throw up, Neville."

"You're going to pass out if you keep this up, and that'll draw attention you don't want right now," Neville said. "At least let me make you a cup of tea. May I?"

"If you want," Seamus said dryly. His mouth felt pasty.

It was a Saturday and Seamus had honestly been torn over what to wear that morning. He couldn't decide between wearing as many clothes as possible to hide the aberration that was his blank skin, or keep as much of it uncovered in case something appeared. Without Neville reaching into Seamus' trunk and picking out his softest sweater, there was a good chance that Seamus wouldn't even have made it out of the Gryffindor Common Room.

Neville poured Seamus a cup and mixed in milk and sugar as best as he could, based off of how he knew his friend took it. He slid it across the table and it even nudged Seamus' hand, but he didn't budge.

"Seamus?" Neville said. "Seamus, maybe he's busy..."

"Three days, Neville," Seamus said. "Three days with nothing. And I've sent him messages, and still nothing…"

His notebook was full of them, desperate calls on their shared canvas. _Are you okay? Is everything okay? Are you hurt? Where are you? Do you need anything? Are you okay? Dean I love you. Send me something. Anything. Is everything okay? Can I help you? Please send me something. Tell me what you need. Are you okay? Please be okay. I love you. _

"We don't know what that means," Neville said far too reasonably. "I know it's hard not to think of the worst…"

"When have you known Dean Thomas to spend more than an hour without doodling something?" Seamus snapped back with more bite than Neville deserved. Neville didn't flinch.

"Seamus, keep it together," he said stoically, quietly. "We're in the Great Hall. There are Death Eaters watching. Drink your tea."

Seamus felt like he was going to cry, but he drank his tea and let Neville join him on his side of the table and rub circles on his back.

"I feel naked without him," Seamus said quietly.

"I know," Neville said. "I'm sorry. This isn't forever, okay? We're going to get out of this, all of us."

"You can't say that as if it's definitive, Neville," Seamus said. He felt the Earl Grey slosh in his stomach uncomfortably and stared at his blank, empty hands.

Neville kept a close eye on him all day, enlisting Ginny Weasley and Luna Lovegood's help in the process to make sure that Seamus wasn't alone. But at the end of the day, he was alone with his thoughts after curfew when they'd all gone to bed—really alone, without his usual array of ink companions. He couldn't sleep.

And so Seamus did something he hadn't done in a long time.

He reached into his trunk and took out a black sketchbook—it was a handsome, leather-bound thing. He'd hoped to give it to Dean for Christmas, having picked it out long before this mess had begun. He had still packed it in his trunk knowing that he wouldn't be able to, just because it wouldn't have felt right to leave it at home. He flipped open to a blank creamy page. He wished that he had those nice Muggle sketch pens that Dean used, but all he had was ink and quills so he grabbed some of those too.

And for the first time in a long time, Seamus practised. He conjured the image of the dragon in his mind, dipped his quill in ink, and drew a harpoon-tipped tail and ferocious eyes. He wasn't sure if there was still a canvas for it to appear on somewhere in the world—for it to come to life, Dean would say. But he had to try.


End file.
